The "Charters of Freedom"
When the building was completed in 1937, the Rotunda did not hold the documents now nearly synonymous with the National Archives: the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Pope had designed the National Archives Rotunda as a shrine for these documents, but both documents were still housed at the Library of Congress.
On December 13, 1952, after years of negotiation between the Archivist of the United States and the Librarian of Congress, the two documents were transferred to the National Archives. Together with the Bill of Rights, which had been transferred to the Archives in 1937, the National Archives refers to these three documents collectively as the "Charters of Freedom."
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